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Areas › Anger › Growing empathy
Nobody sets out to get harder. It happens quietly, one shrug at a time, until a story that would have undone you at twenty barely registers at forty. A short daily practice of wishing someone well is enough to start softening it. You are not installing something new. You are getting back something you already had.
So do not be harsh with the orphan (Quran 93:9). It is said to a man who had been an orphan himself, and remembering your own tender years is usually what softens the skin.
الضحى
فَأَمَّا ٱلۡيَتِيمَ فَلَا تَقۡهَرۡ
So do not be harsh with the orphan
Qur’an 93:9read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Adults randomly assigned to a short compassion training gave more afterwards in an altruism task, and how much each person changed tracked changes in their neural responses to suffering. It is a controlled experiment, which is encouraging. It is also a brief training measured by a laboratory game rather than a picture of a changed life.
Weng HY, Fox AS, Shackman AJ, Stodola DE, Caldwell JZ, Olson MC, Rogers GM, Davidson RJ. (2013). Compassion training alters altruism and neural responses to suffering.. Psychological science doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Feeling for others responds to practice, so what dulled with use can return with use.
When you are already angry, imagining your way into someone else's head asks the tired part of you to do the heavy lifting. Start with your body instead: look at their face, let your breathing and your shoulders come closer to theirs.
Two people who spend time in step really do become more attuned. Nothing passes between your brains while it happens, though, so put the hours in rather than waiting for the wiring.
The advice to touch, to eat together, to move your body, to say the true thing out loud stands up perfectly well without the hormone story attached.